Agreed. Why aren't they looking to the product side of things?
The main business of newspapers was always just getting the info from A to B. I had a reporter friend who used to compare his job to working on the docks. Some fire would break out, and he'd be sent to "unload" the news from the fire department and the usual shocked-and-stunned families and the neighbors, and boom, file his story. And this was when newspapers were actually good.
By the 1990s, newspapers had virtually no useful content left. It was just a habit for some readers, and a local monopoly for certain forms of advertising. Newspapers had been consolidated to the point where local news was dreadful to non-existent, and most of the paper was filled with bland wire stories and syndicated columnists of no particular merit. The one thing you really needed the newspaper for was classified ads, and the internet killed that pretty quickly.
People are willing to pay more for actually rare information. Nouriel Roubini, the economist, runs a paid newsletter to people who want to hear his contrarian views.
Furthermore, there's a huge gap in local news these days. Local government, schools -- all this stuff that really matters to people has no medium any more.
My local government uses Twitter. I have been following them for a while now and I'm generally pleased with how it works. They tend to tweet a lot of dull things like links to meeting minutes, but how interesting can local government really be?
It came in handy a while back when I woke up to find out that a street was closed due to emergency water line maintenance. Sure it's just a little thing, but it saved me five minutes of finding out the hard way during my commute.
> Furthermore, there's a huge gap in local news these days. Local government, schools -- all this stuff that really matters to people has no medium any more.
In Minneapolis & St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood and specialty newspapers are still prevalent, numerous, and of good quality. A real joy to read compared with the neighborhood papers of New York City. But, then, I guess the Twin Cities has a culture of indie publishing.
Wannabe indie publishers are everywhere. What I suspect is that they somehow cracked the advertising problem for such small publications. Maybe an ad co-op?
Comments
Agreed. Why aren't they looking to the product side of things?
The main business of newspapers was always just getting the info from A to B. I had a reporter friend who used to compare his job to working on the docks. Some fire would break out, and he'd be sent to "unload" the news from the fire department and the usual shocked-and-stunned families and the neighbors, and boom, file his story. And this was when newspapers were actually good.
By the 1990s, newspapers had virtually no useful content left. It was just a habit for some readers, and a local monopoly for certain forms of advertising. Newspapers had been consolidated to the point where local news was dreadful to non-existent, and most of the paper was filled with bland wire stories and syndicated columnists of no particular merit. The one thing you really needed the newspaper for was classified ads, and the internet killed that pretty quickly.
People are willing to pay more for actually rare information. Nouriel Roubini, the economist, runs a paid newsletter to people who want to hear his contrarian views.
Furthermore, there's a huge gap in local news these days. Local government, schools -- all this stuff that really matters to people has no medium any more.
My local government uses Twitter. I have been following them for a while now and I'm generally pleased with how it works. They tend to tweet a lot of dull things like links to meeting minutes, but how interesting can local government really be?
It came in handy a while back when I woke up to find out that a street was closed due to emergency water line maintenance. Sure it's just a little thing, but it saved me five minutes of finding out the hard way during my commute.
> Furthermore, there's a huge gap in local news these days. Local government, schools -- all this stuff that really matters to people has no medium any more.
In Minneapolis & St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood and specialty newspapers are still prevalent, numerous, and of good quality. A real joy to read compared with the neighborhood papers of New York City. But, then, I guess the Twin Cities has a culture of indie publishing.
Wannabe indie publishers are everywhere. What I suspect is that they somehow cracked the advertising problem for such small publications. Maybe an ad co-op?